THE 1930s were a golden age, for dance bands, dictators—and aviation. Flying small planes was fashionable, air races were popular and records were constantly broken. It was a time when the desire swiftly to link distant lands coincided with the ability to do so. Pilots were stars and many of the brightest were women.
The first to get a pilot’s licence (and possibly the first to fly a plane) had been French actress ‘Baroness’ Raymonde de Laroche, in 1910. She flew 300 yards with the aircraft’s maker, Charles Voisin, running alongside shouting, having forbidden her to take off. She perished in a crash in 1919.
Also in 1910, American musician and painter Bessica Raiche built herself a delicate small aircraft of bamboo and silk, which she flew with no instruction at all. Lilian Bland did the same in England, but used ash, spruce, bamboo and elm. Raiche became a distinguished gynaecologist; Bland took up motoring.
‘Barnstorming’ air shows were Bessie Colman’s metier. Of Afro/Cherokee heritage, she qualified in France in 1921—the first black woman to obtain a pilot’s licence. Sensational as ‘Queen Bess’, she flew a war-surplus Curtiss biplane with reckless skill to entertain huge American crowds. In 1926, she fell to her death from a plane after the controls jammed on a loose spanner.
In April 1928, two titled amateur aviators —Mary, Lady Heath, flying in the hope of fame from South Africa to England, and the Hon Mary Bailey, going in the opposite direction ‘to see my husband’—met at exotic Khartoum in Sudan. The welcoming hospitality was telegraphed around the world. Lady Heath had an evening dress in her plane; Lady Bailey had not, but did not mind.
Denne historien er fra May 18, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra May 18, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Happiness in small things
Putting life into perspective and forces of nature in farming
Colour vision
In an eye-baffling arrangement of geometric shapes, a sinister-looking clown and a little girl, Test Card F is one of television’s most enduring images, says Rob Crossan
'Without fever there is no creation'
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The colour revolution
Toxic, dull or fast-fading pigments had long made it tricky for artists to paint verdant scenes, but the 19th century ushered in a viridescent explosion of waterlili
Bullace for you
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Lights, camera, action!
Three remarkable country houses, two of which have links to the film industry, the other the setting for a top-class croquet tournament, are anything but ordinary
I was on fire for you, where did you go?
In Iceland, a land with no monks or monkeys, our correspondent attempts to master the art of fishing light’ for Salmo salar, by stroking the creases and dimples of the Midfjardara river like the features of a loved one
Bravery bevond belief
A teenager on his gap year who saved a boy and his father from being savaged by a crocodile is one of a host of heroic acts celebrated in a book to mark the 250th anniversary of the Royal Humane Society, says its author Rupert Uloth
Let's get to the bottom of this
Discovering a well on your property can be viewed as a blessing or a curse, but all's well that ends well, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee, as she examines the benefits of a personal water supply
Sing on, sweet bird
An essential component of our emotional relationship with the landscape, the mellifluous song of a thrush shapes the very foundation of human happiness, notes Mark Cocker, as he takes a closer look at this diverse family of birds